


Reverence

by quaffanddoff



Category: Six Feet Under
Genre: Death, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor spoilers for season 3, Multi, Necrophilia, Other, Passive Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:15:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24303538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quaffanddoff/pseuds/quaffanddoff
Summary: David has profound reverence for each body that finds its way to his table.
Kudos: 2





	Reverence

David has deep respect for the dead.

Their cold skin and glassy eyes. Their rigid limbs and bloodless veins. Their stillness, their peace.

It’s his job to conceal their bruises and cuts, to disguise their mutilation and trauma, but David doesn’t really see those things as flaws. As far as he’s concerned, each of these “imperfections” is a tribute to the ephemeral fragility of life itself. Dislocation, dismemberment, disfigurement: it's David’s solemn duty to fix the damage, but he knows that, really, there’s nothing to fix. Each is perfect just the way it is. Every mortal wound is a monument to the inherent impermanence of being. That’s why there’s nothing so human as a corpse.

It’s hard not to feel jealous of them sometimes. They’re beyond everything, above it all. A lifetime of fussing and fretting has ended, a new foreverness of serenity has begun. If existence is suffering, then non-existence is bliss. David is in no hurry to die, but he does look forward to the relief and release that will be his eventual reward.

The bodies lay there under the harsh lights, frank and unpretentious in their stark nudity. They’re not worried about impressing anyone. They don’t feel the need to be charming or appealing or sexy anymore. They’ve got nothing left to do but stretch out on their backs like beachgoers tanning on the sand, oblivious to the cold or the hardness of the metal gurney. David has noticed that many of the men he’s slept with tend to pose: while sitting at dinner, lying in bed, or even in the middle of fucking, he'll catch them positioning their bodies in ways that accentuate their assets. Consciously or not, they freeze in unnatural postures that mimic supermodels or porn stars, in order to show off their most flattering angles. They want to look good to him, so they show him only their good sides. It’s a hazard of constant self-monitoring, always seeing yourself through the eyes of others. 

But the dead are free of the burden of self-consciousness. They have no affectations left to offer. They’re beings of pure honesty and authenticity. 

David envies that, too. He wishes he could be that genuine. He starts to feel as though maybe some of that authenticity could rub off on him, if only he could get close enough.

So when nobody else with a pulse is around, he tries getting closer. 

It’s far from easy to overcome the sense of supreme wrongness. This is the ultimate breach of his profession, the utmost violation of his integrity. It contravenes everything he has come to believe about the importance of human dignity and the preservation of bodily sanctity. It's a legal, ethical, vocational, and spiritual transgression like none he has ever committed before. And there's nothing more horrifying than the idea of getting caught doing this.

But he's also never known a sin that was this exhilarating. He feels so undeniably alive when confronted with the contrast of his own warm, vital flesh against a corpse's inert pallor. With every touch, life forces itself upon death in a vigorous resurrection. When he rouses the departed from eternal slumber, he feels awake, _truly_ awake, for the very first time. It becomes David's most sacred way of honoring the dead. Whenever he worships, he feels the grief slip away, leaving only the rapture behind. 

Male and female. Young and old. Conventionally attractive and otherwise. As it turns out, he's much pickier about demographics when it comes to living people. With dead people, just being there on his table is all it takes to catch his eye. Some of them remind him of the limp, malleable men who pass out in his bed after accompanying him home from the nightclub. A lack of response never diminishes the dark elation he gets out of ravishing them. Some bodies remind him of Keith. Some remind him of Jennifer. Sometimes it's making love while other times it's rape. Some of them are exquisite. Some of them are disgusting—and somehow those are the most exquisite of all. 

It’s not like he’s the first person to ever consider doing this. His past and present colleagues must have confronted this unmentionable issue in their own ways. Rico, for example, is down here alone more than anyone else, so theoretically he's had plenty of opportunities if he ever wanted to. David can't really imagine Rico allowing himself to entertain the idea for a second, let alone act on it, but he also knows that you can never _really_ know someone. 

It must have crossed Nate's mind at some point. He’s obviously uncomfortable being around dead bodies, and maybe that’s just squeamishness from being new to the business, but maybe part of him is afraid of what he might do if he ever got the chance. After all, David can only speculate as to what happened that night that his brother said his final, solo farewell to Lisa. 

Then there’s Angela: in the short time that David had worked with her, he had learned more than enough about her sexual attitudes to suspect that she may have explored this arena as one more in a long series of taboo adventures. 

As for Arthur, his peculiar manner seemed incompatible with any kind of normal, reciprocated human passion anyway, so maybe a dead partner would make the most sense for him.

Although David learned the ins and outs of the business from his father, this was one topic they never discussed, so he’ll never know where the real Nathaniel Sr. stood on this subject. The imaginary Nathaniel Sr. he frequently envisions in his mind, however, has now had ample opportunity to weigh in on the matter. Normally, the apparition materializes in order to talk to him: to argue, or to make wry observations, or to impart some token of fatherly wisdom. But he's silent whenever David does _this_. He knows what's happening but he never says a word. He just sits in the corner of the room with a leaden, helpless expression on his face, watching as his son expresses his ardent reverence for the dead.


End file.
